A few simple steps could get you online and give you the ability to do this.

1. Apply to square who then send out a card swipe device that plugs directly in to your Iphone audio input jack.

2. Then whenever you sell an item in store or on the move you just plug in the square and swipe the card

Its that simple.

Square also has the ability to track payments and repeat custom. The beauty of this is that you can access card transactions virtually anywhere and customers can receive their receipts via text or email and of course this is all the better for the environment and the customer doesn’t have a physical receipt that they could end up losing.

The benefits don’t stop there either; because customer data is tracked you can come up with unique ways to reward clients. This could be something as simple as donating money to charity of their choice every time they use you.

We are in the very early stages and they are currently in beta tests in select cities, San Francisco being one.

The company hope to roll this out fast though and as a UK ecommerce development company we are excited about this coming to the UK.

If you want to see a little more of how this works check out the video from the recent tech conference

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2747998

http://squareup.com/

Clients are now receiving letters from their banks, streamline to mention one, stating they have to signup to the compliance management program.

This is so they can manage the process to make sure online traders are PCI Compliant. In 2009 Visa Europe saw a 75%  increase in data compromises compared to 2009. Larger organisations have now tightened up their security and hackers are now turning their attention to smaller merchants to harvest data.

This is now quite in depth and every security loophole must be plugged. Many web development companies are not PCI Compliant.

Is Yours?

Dont be caught out and incur hefty fines!

If you would like to find out some more information check out our page on PCI Compliance or get in touch if you would like to discuss your website and PCI Compliance.

The Basics of PCI Compliance and Validation Regulations

The payment card industry compliance and validation regulations apply to financial institutions, Internet vendors and retail merchants. The rules spell out what security measures must be taken to protect the private information of employers and employees during any transaction occurring with the use of a paycard. They also require certain auditing procedures. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is used by all card brands to assure the security of the data gathered while an employee is making a transaction at a bank or participating vendor.

There are six categories of PCI compliance security standards.

Build and Maintain a Secure Network

Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data

Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters

Protect Cardholder Data

Requirement 3: Protect stored cardholder data

Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks

Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program

Requirement 5: Use and regularly update anti-virus software

Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and applications

Implement Strong Access Control Measures

Requirement 7: Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know

Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access

Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data

Regularly Monitor and Test Networks

Requirement 10: Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data

Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes

Maintain an Information Security Policy

Requirement 12: Maintain a policy that addresses information security

Additionally, there are four merchant categories:

Merchants with more than 6,000,000 transactions per year. Other merchants in Level 1 will be merchants whose security has been violated and data compromised and merchants which another credit card company have classified as Level 1.

Merchants with 150,000 to 6,000,000 transactions per year.

Merchants with 20,000 to 150,000 transactions per year.

Merchants with less than 20,000 transactions per year

PCI Compliance Validation

Credit card companies validate that vendors are abiding by the PCI Compliance regulations. The volume of transactions and the risk determined by the credit card company determines the validation rating for the merchants and institutions accepting credit/debit and paycards. Along with requiring participating businesses to complete a self-assessment questionnaire, MasterCard and Visa perform the following actions to validate a participating business’ security:

An on-site visit and

A network scan performed by an authorised PCI Compliance scanning vendor.

More information can be found at http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pci-basics.php

PCI is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard – a set of requirements which have been laid down to ensure the processing, storage and transmission of credit card information is always carried out in a secure online environment.

Now take a look at our Credit Card Processing page to find out even more about secure transactions you can bank on.